Washington – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday that President Biden’s first steps on issues such as foreign policy and climate change are “incredibly encouraging” for US-UK relations.
“There have been some important developments in the way U.S. and UK thinking has come together in recent weeks, and in particular on issues like climate change, NATO, Iran, but most of all , the ways in which the UK will work together to meet the environmental challenge facing our planet, “Johnson said in an interview with” Face the Nation. ” “And here, I think some of the things we now hear from the new U.S. administration and the new White House are incredibly encouraging. And we want to work on it with the president.”
Johnson was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Mr Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris after they were declared winners of the November presidential election. The president also spoke with Johnson three days after he was sworn in, and Mr. Biden conveyed “his intention to strengthen the special relationship between our countries and revitalize transatlantic ties,” according to a summary of the White House call. .
Johnson told “Face the Nation” that he is “delighted” to have a good relationship with the White House and said he had had “fantastic conversations” with Mr. Biden. The British prime minister also said he was “delighted” that Mr Biden had adopted the slogan “Build better again”, especially when addressing the coronavirus pandemic, although Johnson joked when he did so. use first.
“It’s the right slogan,” he said. “We have to learn from this pandemic. We have to learn about how to share information, how to share drugs properly, how to make sure we don’t accumulate things like personal protective equipment, as we saw earlier in the pandemic. We have to ‘make sure we distribute vaccines’.
Johnson said he hopes the United States and the United Kingdom can work together to learn from the pandemic and said he supports the Biden administration which raises concerns about an investigation assembled by the World Health Organization at the origins of COVID-19. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Saturday in a statement that the White House has “questions about the process used to arrive” at the probe’s first findings and stressed that it is “essential” that the report be independent, “with conclusions of experts free from intervention or alteration by the White House. the Chinese government.”
“When you have a zoonotic plague like coronavirus, we need to know exactly how it happened. In fact, if it’s zoonotic, if it really originated from human contact with the animal kingdom, that’s what it’s said. But we need to know exactly what happened .. Was it in a wet market? Did it come from bats? Were bats associated with pangolins? All of these questions are now matters of speculation, “Johnson said. “We have to look at the data. We have to look at all the evidence. So I deeply support what President Biden has said about that.”
Both the United States and the United Kingdom are facing new strains of coronavirus, one of which was first identified in the United Kingdom, another in South Africa, and a third in Brazil. Public health officials believe the UK variant, B.1.1.7., Is more transmissible and the emergence of new strains has raised questions about the effectiveness of vaccines developed to protect against COVID-19.
Johnson, however, said he has “great confidence” in the vaccines the UK uses and that they have “no reason to think they are ineffective” against the new variants.
“This is a very important consideration for us,” he said. “One of the features of Oxford AstraZeneca recently confirmed by scientists is that it also reduces transmission between people. There is a 67% reduction in transmission as a result of the use of these vaccines.”